Hawking says there are no gods

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Tommy Jeppesen said:
You win in the following sense. I am ready to concede that I am wrong and all those other words, you use to describe me as personal evaluations. And thus I win, because if that is a fact, it is also a fact, that you can't describe that using hard science.
You are using social facts, not brute physical facts.
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Also known as standards.

You lose.
 
Hi Myriad. This is long and sort of a summary of the thread, back to the OP.

Myriad said:
That's a reasonable definition of the physical.

Now please explain it without existence, as you said you can do. An adequate explanation should address such issues as why there are effects you can't do by only thinking differently, and where their perceived characteristics come from.
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That is philosophy. How come there is something and not nothing?
Because there is.
Now notice something about the language. In English we have "things" and "is". Which functions as a certain set of "glasses"; how we use language, determines what we see. So to avoid this I will do this without both "things" and "is". In other words I will use phenomenology and E-Prime.

So "why there are effects you can't do by only thinking differently"? Because of cause and effect. Reality causes me and the effect has the name "me". Thinking works as causation, but thinking only works in a limited sense. Falsification as a process adapted to philosophy and used as skepticism leads to the follow general question: If you accept a limitation in your ability to do a certain behavior, you can ask if the concept of limitation only limits certain behaviors and not others? The answer rests on the acceptance that you don't control reality, but rather that reality controls you. Every category of behavior has a limit, not just say e.g. human mobility.
So seeing works as a behavior(causation) and has an effect; sensory experience. Again you can ask if seeing has a limit? Seeing has in the following sense a limit: What you do as a human involves other behaviors and experiences, so you can't reduce all of your behaviors and experiences down to just seeing/observation.
So if you think, you can do all your behavior just by seeing, you check and you will find, that you can't. That explains the difference between broad and narrow empiricism, in broad you include all experiences and all behaviors. In narrow the reality comes to you as a causation not in you. But if you check you will notice the following and now I use a quote:
Reality: the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them or the state or quality of having existence or substance.
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So seeing/observation caused these words alone? The effect, these words, comes from only seeing? No, they come from seeing and the idea you can do all your life with observation alone, but when you state these words, you do another behavior than seeing. You think and you think, that you only need observation, but you miss that you think, that you only need observation.

Now I will leave e-prime and phenomenology and do a combination of the universe itself versus the universe for which I am a part, but not nothing nor everything.
Now "and where their perceived characteristics come from." Now that depends on what you take for granted when you answer. The most general answer without taking any specific metaphysics for granted is that they come from something, which is not you.
Now depending on how you use the words and how you check how words work you get different answers as back to metaphysics versus phenomenology.
So here it is for a naturalistic framework: The universe started from a singularity and changed to this over time. The arrow of time and caution are brute facts in the following sense:
In contemporary philosophy, a brute fact is a fact that has no explanation. More narrowly, brute facts may instead be defined as those facts which cannot be explained. To reject the existence of brute facts is to think that everything can be explained.
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And now we enter psychology:
Someone: I want a truly correct answer for everything. I demand that science can explain everything.
Me: That is not certain, that you can get that!

In philosophical terms I accept limits to the human condition and experience including for human behavior and also for reason, logic and evidence.
And we always end here for what reality really is:
Those, who don't care, they will their lives anyway.
Those, who demand knowledge for everything.
Those, who accept, that there are limits to knowledge.

So back to the OP and "I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science," Hawking, who died in March, wrote. "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?" and that answered with the process of:
Falsifiability as the capacity for some proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong. That capacity is an essential component of the scientific method and hypothesis testing. In a scientific context, falsifiability is sometimes considered synonymous with testability.
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Can I think differently and get away with that?
That is the everyday falsification of someone to the effect of:
"You need to be like me and think and accept like me what reality is or you will die, not have a life and not really be here, because your mind is elsewhere".
Now I answer "NO!!!" and observe the following:
I didn't die. I am still here and have a life. I can hear the traffic and so. And I don't seem to be elsewhere, because when I do this, I always get back an answer to the effect of "Your are so wrong, you can't really do it differently and so on". But when I test that, I have just done so.

I have spend 25 years checking general knowledge and asked other humans and I have found out the following: I am special needs person and I have a life different than those, who demand, that I must be like them.
I have checked their reasoning and found, that I can do it differently. I don't die, because I am not the same as them; I have a life though different in some senses than them and I am here in reality, because they keep answering me and telling me, that I am elsewhere.

That is my expertise in regards to western culture and the general assumptions of what reality really is. I am unreal to some, yet I am still here, though they and I are different in some cases.
I had to check, because I take seriously, when something tells me, how reality works, because I might have missed something and that might be bad.

So that is it. I have learned, that I am the actual falsification of: "We live in the "same" reality and if you are different, you are not here." How come that I am the actually falsification? Because by answering me, they confirm that I am a part of reality.
But we all do that - atheists and theists alike. All humans have warts and so on, we just have different warts.

In short - science is about "sameness", philosophy is about "sameness versus differentness".
The actual answers of "sameness" I leave to the scientists. That is their job. When some of them then claim "sameness" for all of reality, I answer with a different fact than a fact of "sameness" and answer with the fact of "differentness".
I don't claim that I control and can answer for "sameness". I only answer with "differentness" and they keep demanding ""sameness". Since I use a standard of "differentness" and they only accept a standard of "sameness" and related evidence, I can't give evidence to them, because they only accept evidence of "sameness".

I want them to accept the limit of "sameness" and also accept "differentness", so to them it means I demand that we are all the same as me. They understand "differentness" as I demand "sameness".
That is the OP for all its "sameness" and "differentness".
"I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science," Hawking, who died in March, wrote. "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?"
I think differently. And that is the actual falsification of universal "sameness" with only one kind of facts; i.e. brute facts.
I am from the softest end of soft non-science and always refute universal "sameness" with "differentness".
And somehow I am still here. In front of my keyboard, my dog besides me and I have a life and to the best of my ability, I am not out of my mind. Yet some of those with "Science" declare a lot of problems with my mind, i.e. psychology. To me some of them don't use a theory of mind, because they don't accept a different mind and a different POV. The theory of mind says that you can hold that other humans have a different mind and sometimes a different POV.

Hope you enjoyed it.
 
ynot said:
You obviously don't "see how that works". My deliberately "empty words" were intentionally mimicking and mocking your "empty words" to demonstrate how easy it is to use "empty words". Your emotional investment in philosophy is reflected in your emotional defence of it.

The reason most people prefer science over philosophy as a pathway to truth is because science has been conclusively proven to be a far better pathway to truth than philosophy (or any other method). Not because they hate philosophy or worship science. Do you see the difference?
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Preferring science to philosophy doesn't make sense to me because each of them has different objects and methods. It's like saying that I prefer mathematics to physics. If it's a matter of subjective taste, it doesn't concern me.
And this is proven because you have not find a single scientific article dedied to the existence of God. And this are not empty words.

And before you mention that. A photo on Olympus doesn't prove either that the Greek gods didn't exist, let alone that the gods in general don't exist.
And I'm sure the Greek gods didn't exist but not because I've read it in a scientific magazine that doesn't exist. Why? For the same philosophical reasons that convinced a long list of atheist philosophers from Democritus to Russell. (And the photo of Olympus is the only thing that has been presented here that resembled something like scientific proof).
 
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Belz... said:
Stop saying that. You don't even know what the word means, much less how to engage in it.
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Philosophy: the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy

That "or" means that there is one standard and not 2, because there can only be one standard.
Phenomenology: The science of phenomena as distinct from that of the nature of being and is the latter, but of course it is about existence, real, physical and other ontological claims, yet it is not as it is a study distinct from that of the nature of being.
Of course, this is not philosophy:
...(1) "all existential propositions are synthetic" and that (2) "Being is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing." His conviction that "existence is quite definitely not a predicate"...
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Scroll down to LOGIC AND EXISTENCE
https://www.ontology.co/existence.htm
Existence is a thing, because you say so. All words are about reality and independent of the mind, so all what goes on in the mind is independent of the mind.
And reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete event or physical entity, is not really real, because nobody never does that. Reification is not a real thing, so what is it?

I know that you and I think differently and how we deal with that is different.
Now there is a fun fact about this: My thoughts even if really unreal and not connected to anything in reality take places as an actual real physical process in my brain and results in you reading them now. :)
 
3point14 said:
What does?
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That you don't need to believe in gods. You can live a whole life without God and still have a life. If gods were in practice physical facts, you would be dead, if you didn't live accordingly. You can't live without water, but you can live without God.
In practice as for how reality works in practice, there is no hard need for gods, because you can live without them. The need for gods are cultural overall and not a physical need.
 
3point14 said:
What does?
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Nothing. And David insists on thinking he's trapped us in some logical "gotcha" with that.

Something that isn't falsifiable is just as "Not there" as something that is falsifiable and has been falsified.

Again that's the point of the Dragon in the Garage that people just keep not getting. Whether or not the dragon is presented as a falsified thing and is proven to not be there or is presented as a non-falsifiable nothing that has no characteristics and therefore can't be falsified... the dragon is equally "not there" in both scenarios.

In Scenario 1 someone tells me that a 1.7 meter tall, bright green with red stripes, 3 toed dragon lives in my garage. If there is no object that meets that definition in my garage, I have disproven the existence of the garage dragon. The dragon is not there.

In Scenario 2 someone tells me that a vague dragon of vague qualities with vague characteristics exists in my garage and every test is countered with an after the fact excuse why it doesn't technically disprove the vague dragon. THE DRAGON IS STILL NOT THERE. It's equally not there. No it's not "Just a little more" there than the first dragon.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Nothing. And David insists on thinking he's trapped us in some logical "gotcha" with that.

Something that isn't falsifiable is just as "Not there" as something that is falsifiable and has been falsified.

Again that's the point of the Dragon in the Garage that people just keep not getting. Whether or not the dragon is presented as a falsified thing and is proven to not be there or is presented as a non-falsifiable nothing that has no characteristics and therefore can't be falsified... the dragon is equally "not there" in both scenarios.
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And you don't get the falsification of the we are not in the exactly same reality. If that was the case, we could't disagree.
The words same and similar are either the same or similar. Hence we are not in the exact same reality, but we are not the same. We share similarities and we have difference.
One of which is how we understand this and that is the falsification of the exact same reality. :)
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
I know that you and I think differently and how we deal with that is different.
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No, this is not a solution to every problem you are presented with. On the matter of your pretense to expertise, you expect Skeptic Ginger to think like you and give you the same credit you give yourself. Spreading the relativist mayonnaise everywhere doesn't get you the particular duck a l'orange you want from her. You don't believe your own hype when it doesn't suit your desires, and you are unwilling -- and I daresay unable -- to reconcile that particular problem. So isn't it about time you concede what everyone already knows?
 
Belz... said:
Ask a toddler. He'll know.
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But you don't because you haven't answered. If all words are about the real and these word here are about the real, then for "a real thing or not" what is "or not" as a real thing?
What is "or" as a real thing? What is "not" as a real thing?

Well, reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete event or physical entity.

The words require cognition and thus only are real as abstract beliefs. They have no concrete event, because you can't see, touch, smell, taste or otherwise engage with them. They have no length, shape and so on. They are mental and thus abstract beliefs.
"Everything are real things or not" as the end result of your thinking is a hypothetical construct, which you treat as a concrete event or physical entity. :)
 
Tommy the fact that nobody can answer your nonsense is your problem, not ours.

You reject reality, claim everything is just one a different perspective, maintain one set of intellectual standards for yourself and one for everyone else, and do nothing but vomit walls of gibberish to everything.

YOUR QUESTIONS ARE TOO STUPID AND MEANINGLESS TO ANSWER, THEY AREN'T JUST TOO COMPLICATED FOR US TO ANSWER.
 
David Mo said:
Preferring science to philosophy doesn't make sense to me because each of them has different objects and methods.
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And if the object is to show that something exists in the way people believe it to exist, then I choose science because it has evolved effective methods for doing that. The God people worship exists in the same general way they treat the existence of anything else, and has effects in the universe that they believe are worshipful. Science can test the existence of such things.

But I don't think what's being practiced in this thread is in any way philosophy as, say, a college philosophy professor would accept the term. Among those pretending to apply it here, the object is clearly obfuscation, and the method appears to be deconstruction. It's analogous to wielding a chainsaw in the woodpile and calling the result furniture.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Tommy the fact that nobody can answer your nonsense is your problem, not ours.
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He thinks we can't recognize it as nonsense. He's convinced himself he's a master philosopher and that everything that comes from his keyboard must be philosophy gold. And if no one else bothers to address it, it can only be because they don't understand it. It's a performance art. We could chalk it up to pure delusion if not for the exceptions he carves out for himself. Everything is relative except for the universal applicability of relativism. Everyone's perspective is different and valid, except that his perspective of his own proficiency must be respected by everyone. That's what makes it a deliberate act, in my judgment.
 
JayUtah said:
No, this is not a solution to every problem you are presented with. ...
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No, we share that we need water, I know that. But if I steal your water to survive and you die or in reverse, that is natural, yet you can't answer with science what is right or wrong about that, because both are cases of natural behavior.
There is no objective standard to compare that with. That is my point. The situations are different and there is no evidence for neither being right or wrong, because both cases are natural.

It is natural behavior in some humans to believe in a god(s), so how can that be wrong as a natural behavior.
That is the limit of your same standard for all evidence.
So for some facts about the universe science works, but not others.

  • All facts are exactly the same and there are no difference, because all facts can be reduced down to the same factor or single category using one methodology.
  • Verification: Yes.
  • Falsification: No.

I get the limit of cognitive relativism in practice, you don't mess with physical facts and your life has a physical aspect, but that is not all.
You think, I don't get that. I do, I also get that science is a limited methodology.

You want one universal standard for evidence and the fact that I can get away with being different than you is the falsification of your idea.

https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
Make a counter to that and I will make a defense of it. But you don't what to do that.
All you want is this:
No, this is not a solution to every problem you are presented with, therefore it is not a solution at all.
There can only be one type of solution to every problem, you are presented with and science is the answer.
 
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